Carol Yinghua Lu on the occasion of Julia Steiner’s solo exhibition deep voice – clear sky 净空 – 深声 at
Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing:
Basel-based Swiss artist Julia Steiner might yet to become a familiar name to many of us in the
Chinese art world, but she is no stranger to China. She has spent extensive time and energy traveling and
working in China, through two artist-residency stays in Galerie Urs Meile in Beijing. What brought her to
China in the first place was the fact that when she started out making works on paper and showing her
gouache paintings back home in Switzerland, one of the most common responses she received was that
many in Europe thought she was influenced by Chinese traditional paintings. It was then that she began
reading about Taoism and learning about Taoist thoughts through the works of Laozi and Zhuangzi. As
she read more, she made a decision to come to China and to see it for herself.

Composing a painting or an installation through collaging and by responding intuitively, sensually
and aesthetically to physical conditions and atmospheric surroundings of a space has been a systematic
approach in Steiner’s practice. The paper she paints on and the process of making each painting are the
connected-links between how she witnesses and experiences a space or a condition and how she articulates
such an experience. She drew situations, persons, fragments of situations, sights and scenes. The
process of working through a painting is a process of recalling and conveying a personal immersion in a
situation, be it darkness or an empty space. As the artist describes it herself, it is as if taking a walk
through a painting.

In the early paintings she made around 2005, what emerged as motifs were usually a mixture of
things: observations, noise she heard, scenes she witnessed, sentences she heard or read, atmosphere she
felt in a space. These were inspirations she would start with and she would then try to find an image for
their materialization on paper. It was usually not a clear idea of the actual image, but more of a feeling of
what the image was and how it should look like. These images in her work were more imaginary than
factual, yet firmly based on the reality as she experienced it. Instead of portraying birds fluttering around
in the space, resting on a tree or horses running, literally as they appear, what Julia Steiner sets out to do
in her painting is to make apparent the experience as such.

Until now, Steiner always works in black and white. In her paintings, the majority of which are
done in large scale, whiteness is almost always more expressive and outstanding than blackness and is
nearly inevitably the first thing that catches one’s eyes. In a way, Steiner is sculpting space and void in her
works, a process motivated by her experience and memory of the reality, her personal reality, to be
precise, paths she takes, places she visits, sound she hears and scenes she witnesses. It’s both personal and
original. She does not take references from theoretical writings or precedents from art histories. I asked
Steiner if having being in China a number of times, doing research and making works, had she come to
agree with any of the resemblance and connection people back home talked about between her paintings
and Chinese paintings. She told me that in fact shortly after arriving in China, she knew that such a
generalization about Chinese paintings and the formal comparison between hers and Chinese traditional
cultures were just irrelevant.

In the exhibition at Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing during the installation process, Julia Steiner has
brought in 3500 kg of wet clay to the gallery space and worked on them for seven days on a wood base,
measured at 3.20 m wide and 4.10 m long with a height of 28 cm, built especially to hoist this sculptural
being. She also made a painting on the walls of the exhibition space, framing the sculptural work. Like
her paintings, the clay work requires the artist to be with it, spending time observing, molding, feeling
and making it, taking some distance from it and returning to it. After a two-week breathing period, the
artist will cover it with black glossy acrylic paint. This enormous and abstract clay landscape will continue
to dry during the time being of the exhibition and will crack, change form and become a living presence
in the space. This new direction of working with clay does offer a more corporal feeling, the experience of
the density and the energy of the artist’s movement in full dimensions and from all angels.